The Age of the Food Allergy

by Michael Y. Park

on 04/25/13 at 09:00 AM

In case you were living on a desert island the last decade or so, every other kid these days seems to have a food allergy. Whether it's a the concerned parent who calls ahead to get every last detail about the food you're going to serve at a birthday party, or the burger joint that posts warnings telling customers not to take the free peanuts outside because of the risk of causing a reaction in passing children, you can't avoid the specter of the anaphylaxis that now hovers over every discarded peanut shell, every PB & J sandwich, every grade-school cafeteria.

For those who don't themselves have life-threatening allergies, or who don't have family members who have them, the "precious snowflake" reaction is fairly typical. It's an inconvenience to lots of people and, anecdotally, doesn't seem to be that big a problem anyway -- after all, they don't know anyone who's actually allergic to X, Y or Z.

Over the last few months, more and more writers have been addressing that viewpoint eloquently.

"Allergic families live in a parallel universe in which what is harmless to everyone else requires extreme vigilance from us," says Curtis Sittenfeld, whose daughter has reactions to peanuts, tree nuts, eggs and dairy. "Being the parent of a child with food allergies is like someone suddenly
telling you the colors orange and gray are harmful to your child. I can
guarantee that you'd soon realize orange and gray are everywhere."

Sittenfeld goes on to plead with other parents to be careful with their kids' snacks at playgrounds and around potentially allergic children: "[W]hen I watched other children handle food, I felt like they were holding
tiny snakes. Maybe the snakes were poisonous and maybe they weren’t;
maybe they’d escape, and maybe they wouldn’t."

In a New York Times Magazine article about an experimental food-allergy treatment, Melanie Thernstrom takes on some of the misconceptions about how allergies arise, chief among them the hygiene hypothesis, the once-prevalent idea that kids get allergies because they weren't exposed enough to potential problem sources -- which has morphed over the past couple decades into a not-so-veiled criticism of the parents of kids with allergies, i.e., "they're weak because you babied them too much." That theory, she notes, has fallen out favor, as has easy explanations scientists once sought in genetics. The new avenues of research are environmental toxins, smoking habits in the parents and grandparents, and prenatal and early-childhood diets.

Back at Slate, Elizabeth Weingarten reacted to news of the so-far successful treatment with glee. But having food allergies, she noted, has made her a stronger person in many ways. "It has taught me to be assertive and persistent. Restaurant waiters and
store clerks are often condescending and flippant when I ask about
ingredients," she writes. "My nut allergy has also taught me to be my own protector and guardian."

But maybe I'm biased toward their perspectives. I have allergies, a couple of them pretty severe, and one that once resulted in anaphylaxis. I've received a lifetime of unsubtle jabs that presume my parents must've raised me in a bubble (if anything, it was the opposite -- my folks, old-school toughies who assume anything that doesn't kill you right away is a form of hypochondria, made a point of feeding me foods that I insisted caused reactions, at least the ones that didn't cause me to stop breathing. It doesn't work). I've, occasionally, had to be the guy who asked the waiter which kind of nut was meant, precisely, when the menu listed "tree nuts" next an otherwise delicious-sounding offering -- nine times out of 10, the waiter can't answer that question. And I readily admit to feeling markedly safer knowing there's an EpiPen in the medicine cabinet at home.

Best of all, it's become a much more hospitable world for allergy sufferers than it was in the '70s and '80s. The eyerolls have all but disappeared, as have the awkward interrogations by fellow diners, followed by the once-inevitable insinuations that this or that food allergy must be made up. (And why, exactly, would I invent an allergy to macadamia nuts? To get myself out of that trip to Hawaii?)

Years ago I had a friend who disliked shellfish and telling people he was allergic was his way of not getting pressured or berated.
One of my sisters had celiac and the other had yeast and mold allergies which is a lot tougher to deal with because unlike gluten, people are not as aware of what is and isn't acceptable and it's not always so clear cut. Recently, the issue of ladyfingers in tiramisu came up. Celiac sister knew she couldn't eat it and other sister thought she couldn't until I mentioned that they were cookies and hence yeast free. So she delightedly took a bite until I mentioned the mascarpone. "Oh, I can't have cream cheese," she said.
How was I suppose to know? She didn't ask about the other ingredients. I knew aged and blue cheeses were off limits.
It's gotta be tough having to monitor every bite you take. Rather than be annoyed we should try to be accommodating and understanding. Allergies are so prevalent they're becoming mainstream.

Kat15
11:48:15 AM on
04/25/13

And let's not forget food chemical allergies! My husband was told he had hay fever 12 months a year and was treated for it completely unsuccessfully all his life until we did an elimination diet. Took away all foods and added them back one at a time to see if he was allergic to foods. He could eat cucumbers, dill, sugar, salt, vinegar, so we tried pickles. Instant reaction! We read the label and Tartrazine, or yellow food coloring, was the only ingredient we hadn't tried. Retried the experiment several times with the same results. So, now I make pickles or buy the expensive ones that use turmeric. (Why does that make them so expensive?) Anyway, as we continued on with our experiment, we found he was allergic to no foods, but 4 different food chemicals. My point is this. How many people out there are unknowingly allergic to the highly processed foods we eat? When are doctors going to start looking at that as a possible cause for chronic illnesses? It is now impossible to ask a waiter if tartrazine or any other chemical is an ingredient. How can we ask them to check every container used for cooking to see if one of these chemicals might be present?